Unnoticed, unrecognised, unrequited
by BlueEyedAthene
Summary: You'd treated him badly from the outset of your acquaintanceship; that much you openly admit to. Now it's come back to bite you.


**Unnoticed; unrecognised; unrequited.**

You treated him badly from the very start of your acquaintanceship; that much you openly admit to. You regret it immensely day in and day out. Had you treated him better, maybe you wouldn't have found yourself in this predicament - this over-used, clichéd predicament of unrequited love (or would it be more appropriate to call it unrequited like? After all, you're only seventeen - much too young to fully understand love in all it's intricacies, never mind claim to be in it).

He's the best friend of your favourite cousin, and has been since they first met. He was always kind to you; never tried never to make you feel left out; never treated you badly - and yet you treated him like shit from the get-go. Maybe it was out of jealousy (he had after all, unwittingly taken your life-long best friend away from you), maybe it was due to the trials and tribulations of adolescence, maybe it was purely that he rubbed you up the wrong way - you don't know. No matter the reason though, it disgusts you when you think about it. You didn't treat him badly due to his sorting into Slytherin house or anything as puerile as that, mind (while you **were** sorted into Gryffindor, you took after your mother in more ways than one and promoted inter-house unity - among other things); but you didn't treat him the way he deserved to be treated with kindness and respect.

Any attempts at friendly conversation from him were rejected with a blunt response, and any attempts at kindness brushed aside as if they were nothing. Yet, when you did make the effort to get along with him (which occurred only sporadically), you got along like a house on fire! You shared the same interests, had similar book tastes, watched the same shows on the Muggle television (the fact that he even **owned **a Muggle device had shocked you slightly at first, but proved to you once and for all that prejudice based on family names was not only hypocritical, but juvenile), and were both avid supporters of the Falmouth Falcons - being able to sprout off all their stats back to 1998! To put it bluntly, you were both what would be considered nerds, and were unashamed of it too. However, whereas you were of the more socially awkward variety, he was bursting with charisma and as a result, was never short of friends or people to talk to.

Maybe this was what started your dislike of him. It's possible that as a socially awkward eleven-year-old thrust into the vast expanse that is Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, you acknowledged the advantage he had over you with his superior social skills and resented him for his ability to interact easily with others - thus helping him adjust to life in the castle effortlessly. However, you think it is more to do with the rumour that your friends started in your third year - that he, Scorpius Malfoy, fancied you.

Now, as has been previously mentioned, you were one of the more socially awkward fourteen-year-olds attending Hogwarts at the time; and so, unlike most of the female populace in your year, you hadn't the slightest clue how to act around someone who allegedly fancied you. It all started when your small group of friends started intermingling with his - being but adolescent girls eager to be noticed by the opposite sex. Being opposed to change, you tried to stop it, treating him increasingly more horribly in an attempt to get things back to the way they were before. Your friends wouldn't take it and asked you why you were like that with him, especially when it was clear that he fancied you! You refuted their claims of course - not believing that anyone would fancy you, especially not him! But as is the usual, the idea stuck. As a result, you became increasingly awkward around him and distanced yourself further, ignoring his attempts to talk to you, unable to act even somewhat normally around him anymore.

Nevertheless, your friends and his became closer and closer, and by the end of fourth year, were a tight-knit group. Unable to ignore him any longer, you became friends with the ever-expanding group of people that had formed as a result many of whom you had known before Hogwarts. Slowly you began to become closer and closer with Scorpius Malfoy, and even began calling hime by his first name - which shocked him at first; you could see it clearly in his eyes. By the time fifth year came around, he'd gained himself a girlfriend - a fourth year Huffelpuff; and you were almost completely at ease around him. Slowly, he became one of your closest friends - you'd always known that he had family problems (his grandfather on his father's side being the most prominent), what with him being Albus' best friend and all; but he soon began to confide in you about them. It made you feel special, and you began to wonder if your friends had been right all those years ago (but quickly brushed those thoughts aside he had, after all, a girlfriend; and it wasn't as if you liked him like that anyway).

Eventually, you became such close friends that it wasn't unusual for him (along with the rest of your friends) to be coming over to your house during the holidays - something you would never have believed would happen in the past. Surprisingly enough, your father didn't seem to mind so much - something you'd worried about given his warning to you at the beginning of first year (not that you'd heeded it, mind - you made your own opinions of people, thank you very much! It just so happened that your opinion matched your father's initial perception of him). You supposed it was to do with Albus being friends with him for so many years. Out of the whole family, Albus always had been (and always will be) the best judge of a person's character. You only then wondered how you hadn't realised what your father had sooner - that Scorpius Malfoy was a decent bloke.

It was in your sixth year, after he and the Hufflepuff had broken up; that you began to accept the possibility that you may in fact fancy said Malfoy. Being still the socially awkward bookworm that you are (although increasingly less so) you did nothing about it except try to insert yourself in his company more and more. You foolishly began to believe that he might have liked you back, what with the increased amount of physical contact (hugs, lifting you up, and the like) and time spent around each other. Only to be crushed recently upon finding out that he was going out (albeit unofficially) with a mutual friend of yours.

Thus is your predicament. Made only worse by the fact that he treats you exactly as he did before, highlighting what you should really have seen earlier - that he only considers you to be his friend. You, Rose Weasley are but a very close friend to Scorpius Malfoy. Nothing more. Nothing less. No matter how much you would like it to be otherwise.

Such is how you come to blame your younger self's treatment of him. Had you treated him differently: with more kindness, more respect, more friendliness; you might be in a completely different situation entirely.

But then, your feelings could still be as they are now - unnoticed; unrecognised; unrequited. And you don't know which would be worse.


End file.
